How the PagerDuty.org Fund Partners with Social Impact Leaders to Build a More Equitable World
At PagerDuty.org, the social impact arm of PagerDuty, we empower mission-driven teams to build a more equitable world and sustainable future. While we’ve previously written about our philanthropy, technical pro bono and product support programs, today we want to share more about a unique program that we offer social impact leaders across our company through the PagerDuty.org Fund. The purpose of the PagerDuty.org Fund is to drive forward the vision of an equitable world, and we do this not just through the types of organizations we fund and who they are led by. Our funding practices–especially who we give voice and decision-making power to in allocating our philanthropic funds–play an equally important role in helping realize our vision.
At PagerDuty, our Employee Resource Group (ERG) leaders and regional community social impact leads help drive collective impact across the company by supporting our impact customers and community partners. Since 2019, we’ve provided resources to these leaders to build regional, community-centered partnerships and engage PagerDuty employees (colloquially referred to as Dutonians) in meaningful opportunities to give back to their communities. In 2022, we formalized this program by earmarking $60,000 from our donor-advised fund for these social impact leaders to allocate as community grants. To support partner selection in line with our equity framework and grantmaking practices, we designed and led trainings, tools and templates. By the end of the year, 85% of our social impact leaders had allocated funds to 12 organizations globally by applying a partner-centered approach rooted in our cultural value of championing the customer, which emphasizes putting users first and making it easy for them to partner with us.
Sharing decision-making power to further equity
The PagerDuty.org Fund is funded by our Pledge 1% equity commitment and Dutonians across the globe contribute to the value of our impact fund by driving our company’s success. Empowering them to have a say in how and where philanthropic dollars are directed is one of the ways we practice equity and power-sharing in our philanthropy work. We partnered closely with PagerDuty’s Inclusion, Diversity and Equity (ID&E) team to build this program. “By enabling our ERG leaders with the agency to establish long-term partnerships with organizations that support the demographic they serve, we help expand the scope of impact and their motivation to incite meaningful change. This program embodies our cultural value to #TakeTheLead by increasing access to corporate resources for our emerging leaders,” said Carmel Ulbrick, Senior ID&E Program Manager at PagerDuty.
Spotlighting our community partners
Last year, Dutonian social impact leaders helped distribute funds to 12 organizations through this program with some positive early results. One of the partners funded through the program is Kids in Tech, whose mission is to excite, educate, and empower kids from low-income households to be leaders in the 21st century innovation economy. “With PagerDuty’s support, we were able to invest in building our resources to expand the number of kids we reach with our programming by 60%,” said Olu Ibrahim, Founder and CEO at Kids in Tech.
The impact of our community grant program has also been felt by our social impact leaders. “Alongside my Atlanta colleagues and RiSE ERG members, I am passionate about serving our local community through youth mentorship. With PagerDuty’s grant, our community partner Empowr can launch mentorship programs and buy necessary supplies to teach Atlanta’s Black and Latine high schoolers coding. In addition to grant funding, Dutonians aim to regularly volunteer with the Empowr team and students this year to help further their impact,” said Mya King, who co-leads RiSE, our ERG that supports PagerDuty’s Black employees.
“PatriotDuty is committed to supporting the veteran community and recognizes the valuable skills and experience they bring to the workforce. We’re partnering with Hire Heroes USA to help veterans successfully transition into civilian careers. Our partnership will assist 16,000 veterans in transitioning into the workforce with an average starting salary of $60,000 and support them with career advice, training, coaching and mentoring,” said Donavon Roberson, who co-leads PatriotDuty, our ERG that supports veterans.
What’s next for our community grantmaking program
At PagerDuty, we continuously work to foster a culture of changemakers where employees can thrive, grow and positively impact their communities. The community grantmaking program is an innovative benefit we offer social impact leaders across the company to engage their teams and expand a social impact mindset across the business. As we continue to invest in PagerDuty’s social impact leaders and our community partnerships, we are building additional tools and training for our leaders to begin tracking the intended impact of the community grants. Transparent learning and open sourcing tools is integral to our impact approach. As part of this commitment to ongoing learning, we will share our training materials and process through the peer communities that we are a part of, including the Pledge 1% and Impact Cloud communities.
Learn more about broader impact work through our recently published annual Impact Report and learn more about each of the organizations funded through this community grantmaking program by clicking on the logos below.
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